Links for 20210825
It is a fact of life that we hold ideas we would like to believe, to a lower standard of proof than ideas we would like to disbelieve. In the former case we ask "Am I allowed to believe it?" and in the latter case ask "Am I forced to believe it?"
A synthetic pandemic could be far, far worse than Covid-19 https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/19/natural-pandemic-terrible-synthetic-one-even-worse/
"Updates and Lessons from AI Forecasting", Jacob Steinhardt (initial forecast results of steady general progress & increasing compute, challenges in designing good questions; Hypermind, funded by OpenPhil) https://bounded-regret.ghost.io/ai-forecasting/
“The Cox-Zucker machine is an algorithm for determining "if a given set of sections provides a basis for the Mordell–Weil group of a [certain type of] elliptic surface". It’s a real mathematical finding - but it owes its genesis to Professor Cox and Professor Zucker meeting during grad school, realizing that any result with both their names on it would be “remarkably obscene”, and deliberately working together on unsolved problems until they found something.” (via Scott Alexander)
How an Anonymous 4chan Post Helped Solve a 25-Year-Old Math Puzzle https://www.wired.com/story/how-an-anonymous-4chan-post-helped-solve-a-25-year-old-math-puzzle/
How Alibaba Architects Around Massive Graph Complexity https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/08/19/how-alibaba-architects-around-massive-graph-complexity/
Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning https://sites.google.com/view/isaacgym-nvidia